


Like Jochen Rindt only faster (that's the plan, for sure)

by lakester



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-20
Updated: 2010-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lakester/pseuds/lakester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2010 was going to be Massa's comeback year. If only he didn't have the problematic blood cravings and the attraction to his team-mate to deal with as well as the racing. It's not exactly what Alonso was expecting either, and Rob's just trying to keep everything together. Felipe/Fernando. Felipe&Rob.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Jochen Rindt only faster (that's the plan, for sure)

It starts in Budapest. Or maybe before that, Rob's not certain. Hospitals are surprising uniform, the dark floor, light walls, windows shut and hollowed out people. It's the people that make it different, make it matter. Here, they're what matters, or rather one man in particular does.

\---

It doesn't hurt. There are bandages layered and pressed tight against his head; he's strapped down and his neck fixed in a cast; he can barely see and the voices around him don't make sense, but he doesn't hurt. Felipe clings to that as he drifts off in a drug-addled haze. That's good, right?

The voices are clearer the next time he wakes up.

Felipe has a vague memory of Raffaela beside him, hanging on tightly to his hand. He tries to flex his fingers, but can't see her there now, no matter how hard he blinks.

An unfamiliar voice says, "Let him in," and more quietly, "...matter anyway soon," and more that Felipe barely catches because the room door is open and a familiar figure is there, still in red, but rumpled and red-sleep-eyed.

Felipe must be fading in and out again as he surfaces from a long blink to see Rob at his side, running his thumb over Felipe's wrist. Felipe wants to say something, but can't interrupt the words falling out of Rob, "Sorry" and "mate" and "you know I" all that Felipe hears before a sharp spike of pain and warmth sends him further under.

\---

"So," says Kimi, in the unusual position of trying to fill the silence. Felipe would swear he hears the pop of gum over the line as his team-mate lines up the next thought, the next sentence and fires, "Are you coming back, then?"

"Of course," replies Felipe. "As soon as I'm fit and all the doctors'..." He waves a hand that Kimi can't see across an ocean to illustrate the stubbornness of the medical profession. "I'll see you in Brazil."

"Okay," Kimi says, "I am glad you'll be back."

\---

"Seriously. You know that right?" Rubens sounds as worried as he has the last four times he's called. It's like there's this ritual apology dance he has to go through now before they can talk normally, and Massa snorts at the thought.

Jenson's in the background, "He ought to by now. Maybe you should consider skywriting?" agreeing with Felipe.

"I do and I am," Felipe tells him, rubbing a finger over the scar by his eye as his wrist throbs. "But now back to important things, which of you and Jenson should I have my money on? And are you bringing him home for the karting?"

\---

Stefano calls and tells him he still has a job next year - "If you still want to drive with us?" It's only three days after Kimi left a drunken message on his voicemail, and Felipe bites his hand off in eagerness. Luca calls and offers metaphorical backslaps and literal numbers of a good cosmetic surgeon. Felipe thanks him for both and spends the next half an hour frowning at the face in the mirror, his image wobbling out from under his gaze until Raffaela pulls him away to make him feel the baby kick.

Michael calls - before and after the neck-related announcements - and they talk shop and old war wounds. It's a typical talk with Michael and when he leaves Felipe with a comment about coming back faster and stronger now, Felipe isn't too sure about who he meant or even if they were having the same conversation.

Rob- Rob doesn't call.

\---

Relatively speaking the grounds at Fiorano are plain, crisp and hell, Felipe's even found them beautiful sometimes. Now isn't one of them. It's stupid and he can feel the blood rushing in his head, food swirling in his stomach and he won't fall, he won't faint. He's better now.

Felipe ducks his head between his knees and breathes. It's not driving again that's thrown him, that's doing this, it isn't. He won't let it.

He feels the shadow on his skin before he hears the scuff of shoes on concrete and scratch of fabric on stone, of someone sitting down next to him. Felipe looks up at Rob, sitting on the same step, then shutters his eyes and drops his gaze down to the plastic drinks bottle held out by his engineer.

It's as close as Rob's got to him, since he wrapped Felipe in a hug and a grin when he first got to the factory. Felipe bats away the container. "Not thirsty."

"Course not," Rob agrees. "Just drink," and Felipe's vision flickers out on the word, "there's a good lad."

And maybe he doesn't want to be Rob's good lad, but maybe he does, because Felipe takes the bottle, spinning it in his hands. "I'm not an invalid."

"I know." But Rob is still watching him differently, like he's going to break or something. Felipe just wants everything to go back to normal, not held hostage to seconds and metres he can't remember, so he takes a swig from the bottle and almost spits it out over his undershirt and overalls.

"What is that?" Felipe asks, tilting a little of the bitter, tangy liquid into his hand. "You don't have to poison me if you really wanted Giancarlo back." The red liquid in his hand is sticky and drying out as he speaks.

"Ferrari's new range of colour-coordinated energy drinks?" Rob offers, giving the rest of Felipe's statement the inattention it deserves.

Rob reaches for the bottle, but Felipe's hand is moving as he lists flavours, "Strawberry, cherry, redcurrant, lima beans," and shakes his head. "Seriously?" Their hands knock and the bottle jerks, splashing red against the skin of Rob's arm. It stays liquid, warm and Felipe can't take his eyes off it, the way the light's reflected on the bubbles and threads tracing down and off Rob's forearm.

Rob pulls the bottle from Felipe's slack grip. Only then does he notice his driver's diverted attention, his focus on the beat and pulse of heat beneath and the trickle of blood above Rob's skin.

"Ah," Rob says, and pulls his arm away as Felipe's eyes follow. He's wearing shorts and t-shirt and there's a moment of twitchy discomfort at his lack of sleeves to tug down. "Right." Felipe reaches out a hand, presses up the bloody path on Rob's arm. "Okay, so," he starts again as his driver brings sticky fingers up to his mouth.

"I was hoping your miracle was just you," Rob tells Felipe. A pause. He never wanted Felipe's attention, not like this. "I'm sorry, but I was a bit worried, like. More than a bit really." And though Felipe can read the gaps in that as 'A lot actually. And not so much worried as desperate.' he doesn't interrupt, doesn't make Rob say that, listening instead as his engineer finishes, "Anyway, mate, I kind of gave you a slight case of vampirism."

"What?" Felipe says, fingers slipping out of his mouth. "No, really, what?"

"Vampires," Rob says, "Christopher Lee, Van Helsing, Dracula, floating in through windows at scantily clad women, Buffy?"

"This is the new," Felipe twists a couple of fingers in a circle about his ear, "trick on the not so new guy?"

"Not anything like that, mate."

It takes a lot more questions. "So can I fly?" is doomed to disappointment. Rob's not sure if his denial to "So are you..?" is met with relief or something else. Ultimately Felipe gives in. It's a lot harder for someone to argue about the reality of their new physical state with their engineer's blood staining their lips.

\---

Eventually it gets to be another checklist. After a brief fling at feeding around, which both of them agree to bury, and the decision not to take from Felipe's wife, "I couldn't be sure I could stop in time. I don't want to hurt her," which Rob doesn't argue, doesn't ask what about me, won't you - what if you..?

Felipe reckons the lack of excitement, and inability to turn into mist or a bat - he tried, concentrating hard or being insubstantial or having wings - is more than balanced by the not wanting to terrorise and exsanguinate his family and friends.

The fangs are cool too.

\---

Brakes, aero and tyres are joined by sunscreen, tinted visors and sunshades. His driver securely wrapped in Nomex from his boots up, fully helmeted and visored, and a band of nervousness eases across Rob's insides. He still worries - that hasn't changed. It just means that every so often he needs a moment alone with his charge and some cotton wool and tape. Felipe usually takes from his left arm or wrist. They started from the hand, neither sure how much control they'd need or lose. The neck's still too risky a site to use regularly.

In a close environment like the team he's never sure exactly who knows or thinks they know what. No-one says anything to him that they didn't say before. Sometimes Rob thinks they should, that change like this ought to be visible on one or both of them. Usually, though he's just glad they got away with it.

Later, thinking back, he'll realise. That's when they got careless. Or maybe it just took a relative stranger to see what was in front of him.

\---

"I don't understand it." Fernando tosses the papers on the lunch table he's sharing with Massa. It's a rare enough pre-season test day, an even rarer one that both of them are present at and one of the few chances to compare himself against his team-mate before the heat of race weekends and the audience of millions. Today the figures keep within these walls.

"What's to understand?" His team-mate grins at him, all dark hair and eyes, an orange segment half-way to his mouth. "That in this, at least, I'm better than you?"

The telemetry of the scores of pit-stops they've been doing that morning stare back at Fernando. Each of them showing his reaction times - more than twice that of the Brazilian's and that's being generous toward his own skills. The stop itself is not always slower - Fernando has more consistency in car position and usually launches with less wheelspin, but his rival driver is always quicker on the throttle, on the release than he is.

"It proves nothing," Fernando says.

"You think the numbers are lying to you." Fernando can imagine the look on Massa's face, has been able to since he saw him fist-bumping with his crew earlier.

Focussed on the plate in front of him, out of the corner of his eye he sees Massa has scarfed down his fruit and is eyeing up Fernando's tomato. He spears it and gestures with his fork as he argues. "It is a fluke. Or something."

"Maybe," Massa hedges, not as upset as he should be by Fernando's insinuation. Everyone knows Massa is like a spinning top, fast but liable to switch direction and falling off when he slows out or loses control. Fernando knows he should react to this. "Maybe I just know my team better," Massa says. "And you'll learn yours." A pause, a smug one, Fernando's sure of it. "But I think I'm just faster."

And Fernando is down one team-mate and his fork down one tomato.

Huh.

\---

Bahrain happens and he wins. The top step of the podium in Ferrari and Fernando knows it won't be the last. Everything's fitting into place. He glances over to Massa, still enamoured of his victory - the sun, the champagne, the new piece of silverware. The Mclarens and Red Bulls were fast but not fast enough and Brawn is Mercedes is relatively nowhere.

It was a good few days, he thinks later as he slumps into a window seat and stretches out his legs, toeing off his trainers. It's a long flight and Fernando's soon overtaken by sleep. There are horses and bicycles and a desperate search for a fire escape that he can't quite remember why was so important when he wakes.

Fernando stubs his toe on the ankle of the man in the seat next to his as he heads for the bathroom in the low light of the cabin.

Refreshed, and no longer hopping, with a looser gait his pace on the way back to his seat is slower. He counts backwards the number of rows, almost squashes a sleeping mechanic before he realises he wants row eighteen not row eight.

Massa's still dead to the world. In the time Fernando's been gone, he's sprawled half over his team-mate's empty seat. A gentle shove doesn't wake him, and Fernando tries a not-so-gentle tug towards the aisle which also doesn't. What it does is get him out of Fernando's space so he's going to count that a win. "Another one," he quietly tells the sleeping rival beside him.

Fernando shifts in his seat looking for his headphones. For a small man Massa's kinda heavy on his shoulder - one arm over the armrest and his head rocked back and resting on Fernando's side. Ignoring the weight Fernando pulls on his headset, turns off the overhead air conditioning and closes his eyes.

\---

Away races mean it's a while before they make it back to the factory with races under their belts.

The enterprising mechanic with a camera phone has already circulated the pictures around the rest of the team. Photos from the Bahrain flight are tacked up in strategically visible places in plenty of time before Massa or Alonso get back to Maranello.

In the picture - the most copied one - Massa's hand is on Alonso's leg, above his knee, and each of them have slanted in the direction of the other one, almost propping each other up. Alonso's head is resting on Massa's in a position that manages to vividly recall the stiff neck he had after that flight.

As the only ones not to think it hilariously funny, at least not when it comes to them individually, the two drivers find themselves thrust into each others company.

Eventually it wears - if not off - then it calms down. The team has a job to do that means they can't spend all their time acting like five year olds. It could have been worse. And it was kinda silly.

And, "Eh, at least you don't snore," Fernando says a few days after the edges have smoothed down. "Now we can go on never speaking of this again."

"I guess," says Felipe. "If there was video, then for sure I would have expected it to show up on Youtube by now."

Fernando makes a face at his coffee at the thought. "Lets not give them any ideas. And no more sleeping together in public."

Felipe lifts his glass of milk and clinks it against Fernando's mug. "Agreed."

\---

The team gets to Spain a few days early, and much of Fernando's time has been clogged with interviews and handshakes, but now he has some free time and he wants to show Felipe around properly.

That his team-mate has been here many times before Fernando brushes aside. He has not been here with him, has he? Already he has his arguments marshalled, forces aligned and his routes planned as he gives a perfunctory knock on Felipe's hotel door. The door gives a little under his hand so he gives it a push. It opens a little and Fernando follows; Felipe should take better care and he'll tell him so. Anyone could walk in.

"I hope you're done with your PR already," he calls out.

The room's half lit, light spilling from the ajar bathroom door, but still Fernando sees what he sees. Felipe is crouched - Fernando wants to say kneeling, but he wants that word entirely too much around Felipe, so crouching it is - at the side of the bed, the loose bedclothes pulled tight under his feet. There's not just Felipe, the other figure is Felipe's engineer, perched on the bed. The engineer, Rob, has his hand out to Felipe and maybe there's some explanation for what would still look like some fucked up benediction if Fernando could ignore the light in Felipe's eyes, the glint in his smile or the blood on the other man's hand.

His exclamation of, "What the hell?" Fernando isn't sure if it's in Spanish, Italian or even English, but he figures it accurately conveys his emotional state right now and it also breaks up the little tableau in front of him.

"Felipe was just helping-" Rob's the first to recover his composure and Fernando hates him a little for that calm right now, two fingers against a bloody, wounded wrist.

"Hey, if you don't want an audience, shut the door next time," Fernando bites out. He doesn't know why he didn't expect to see all the other times, all the history, reflected in their eyes, but he didn't and he does. It's a good exit line, even if the door doesn't make a satisfactory slam back in his wake.

"Fernando, wait," Felipe yells out down the corridor and in a moment catches him by the gold-lit lift. Fernando presses the call button again and again it ignores him, the winking light of the lift's path heading in completely the wrong direction.

"It's not like it-" Felipe starts again and Fernando sees his pupils contract, lose that blown look as his team-mate settles. "I just need-" He takes a deep breath. "You weren't supposed to-"

"Hey, who you choose to screw on your own time is your own business," Fernando snaps back, at the thought that maybe he was supposed to be the punchline to an in-joke when he finally thought he was on the inside with Felipe, with Ferrari. It makes him vicious, lashing out. "Is it just him or the rest of your crew too? Because that must be some overtime that gets put in there. I wondered how you-"

"I am not fucking my way through the Ferrari line-up," Felipe is very still and very close, his voice coming out in a low hiss. Fernando can see every flick of movement as his gaze tracks his eye movements.

"So, just fucking Rob and fucking me over," Fernando stops short, not expecting that latter as an outburst rather fighting back with an insouciant comment.

Felipe's closer and his voice clearer as he says, "It's not always about you." Fernando is less and less sure he knows what is going on. Massa is always shorter than him; it must be the proximity that's making him flip offcentre, that's making Felipe seem more... more.

He tries to laugh it off. "You mean you didn't get the memo?"

Felipe's not laughing, flicking a half-worried glance behind them, and Fernando's jab falls flat so he tries again. For a man who just got caught in a compromising position his team-mate looks less embarrassed and more worried under the posture. Maybe?

"Look, if your engineer really has hurt himself." Fernando's not backing down, he doesn't do that, but the last two words echo in his brain - hurt himself, cut himself, cut his wrist and okay Fernando doesn't know why the guy would do that, would try to - his brain veers. Let alone why in front of Felipe, but he doesn't know the engineer that well, has never needed to. Fernando jumps with his conclusion, says, "I'm sorry," and adds, "Hadn't you better check in on him?" Fernando gestures behind Felipe.

Felipe catches his wrist, frowning in puzzlement, and twists his grip, holding it. The lift pings behind them, breaks the moment and Fernando isn't sure if he's grateful or not as, with a shake of his head, Felipe backs them into the lift.

He lets go of Fernando and says with half a grin, "So, you were going to show me the night?"

"Sure," says Fernando, still on unsteady ground as he presses for the ground floor. "I know some places."

\---

He doesn't know this one, Fernando thinks. He blinks. Not from this angle.

It's five in the morning and he could swear birds are singing. A slow spread of a smile rolls across his face. A good night. Though that might just be the alcohol talking. The alcohol and - he nudges the sleeping figure at his feet - Robert's snoring.

They're in a park and Fernando can see bare feet poking out the end of his slacks and feel damp grass beneath him. Robert turns and knocks back the Ferrari cap shading his face. He blinks at the shots of cautious sunlight and curses. At least Fernando thinks it's a curse - it certainly sounds like one but Robert has never taught him any interesting Polish. He's limited to ordering a drink and asking his way to the florists.

"Are you dead yet?" Robert has propped himself onto his elbows and is poking Fernando's side.

"No," Fernando says, running through a quick mental checklist. "No, I am fine." He's a little surprised actually; bits of the night before are a blur and waking up outside, should have left him with a hangover at least, but he is, he feels fine. He even remembers Robert's crowing over drinking Felipe under the table, clutching at his winnings - the cap - before slipping off the end of their bench.

"Good, help me up." Robert flaps a long arm in the air, in his general direction.

"You're sure," Fernando says, sitting up himself.

"Sure," Robert grunts affirmatively.

"I think, perhaps, you're happier down there," Fernando opines, teasing him from his newly vertical position.

Robert scowls at him, but the expression doesn't manage to reach his still sleepy eyes. Fernando takes pity on his friend and takes his arm and pulls. Robert bounces back on his feet, barely taking any weight on Fernando's arm.

Their shoes are neatly tucked under a tree. Robert says it's an ash and Fernando accuses him of making it up, "Bullshitting your way round, as usual."

They scuffle and surprise an old man in a blue cap, untangling from each others as a mess of limbs into the two sensible professionals that they are. That they at least try to be. In front of cameras. Few people here would be able to pick Robert out of a line-up, but Fernando isn't being self-obsessed when he knows that isn't true for him. Not here.

"Hi," he says, pulling on a polite smile. "My friend and I have a bet," and another chance to prove his point, "of the nature of this tree?" Fernando points it out, letting his breathing settle and straightening his shirt.

"Do you know it?" Robert puts in, still looking like a man who'd been on the losing end of an argument. The losing end, Fernando would swear to it.

The man replies in a string of rounded vowels and slick consonants. "Of course," he says, grumbling, at the interruption. "It's a beech. You can see the slope of the leaves, the fine lines of the trunk, the - down, Cassie," he breaks off.

Robert is eyeing the bouncy puppy who really really wants to be friends with his right leg somewhat dubiously, and Fernando can't help but grin. "Down, girl."

A few minutes later they're clear of the park and only a couple of streets away from their hotels. Robert leans against a wall and tugs at his boots, saying, "I had better see if Vitaly made it back."

Compared notes and reinforced memories have given Robert and Fernando a framework for the last night that's a little fuzzy on the details of their four man night out. "Always so responsible," Fernando mumbles under his breath before they split and he turns back north to his hotel.

\---

Felipe is chasing a boiled egg around his plate when Fernando finds his way into the dining room. He looks up as his team-mate slides into the chair opposite him, balancing a bowl of cereal in one hand, a pair of shoes hanging around his neck.

"You had a good night," Felipe asks, still sounding a little wary, despite the night before.

"I did," Fernando says, surprised at himself. He really did. Off track he likes spending time with Felipe. He pushes at the thought, but it stays there. Even if that's all it is, his train of thought runs. On the track? Well, so long as Felipe's behind him, or not driving the world's widest Ferrari. There's views of Felipe he'd far rather have than the back of his rear wing. But he's drifted and Felipe is frowning again, so Fernando puts a smile back on his face and focuses on the man in front of him. It's easier than he would have thought.

"And so." Felipe leans forward enough to tap at the footwear slung over his neck. "It is maybe a new fashion for you, yes?"

"I didn't have enough hands," replies Fernando, true as far as it goes.

"I'll tell you a secret," Felipe says and leans close into Fernando's personal space. Fernando doesn't move back, just puts down his spoon, not wanting to splash either of them. "Most of us wear them on our feet instead," he says, low in his team-mate's ear, and sits back down, snickering.

"Funny," Fernando says. "Obviously, where I have been going wrong all these years." He ignores the feeling of Felipe's breath on his ear and the corresponding drop of his stomach. Too much drink last night. He launches instead into a rambling account of their night once Felipe had dragged a giggling Petrov back to the Renault hotel. It's mostly true, paints Fernando in a little bit more of a flattering light and keeps Felipe's focus where it should be.

On him.

\---

Felipe doesn't like Turkey any more. He has decided. Mostly decided. Qualifying was terrible, the race barely any better and dull besides. His luck at the circuit all but deserting him and the only bright side what he can tease out from outperforming Fernando. Just.

He can hear the rumours - journalists more interested in his future employment than his race result - that he's not the driver he was, that he lost something, some spark in Hungary. Stefano doesn't say anything but he can see the thoughts whirring behind those glasses.

Felipe likes it here. He likes his car when it works. Likes even tweaking and testing it when it doesn't. He likes pushing and vying with his team-mate on track - likes pushing Fernando when they're off the track too. Likes seeing the tension in his shoulders flow, the muscles relaxing under his throat when he provokes a laugh out of the Spaniard.

He. He needs a drink.

\---

"Two more years," Felipe reminds his engineer. He lets himself bounce a little, lets a little of the relief show to Rob. He doesn't have to, and he knows Rob can read him without it. But the office is empty save for them, and Felipe likes to think that here he's Felipe's first and Ferrari's second. And that anyone else Robert Smedley might belong to doesn't count here between them. He's fresh from signing off his press statement with Antonia, a calm and happy, sure roll of words that the team will release later this week. Felipe's always been mostly sure of his seat, he tells himself, but though he's had to have been definite and certain for his dad, strong and safe for Raffaela and the little one, he can just have a moment here where he doesn't have to be so.

Rob grins up at him, his eyes crinkling up. "Not rid of you yet, then," he says, leaving his notes be. "Guess we'll have to have another crack at another couple of championships."

\---

With the ache and tension of Canada still in his veins Felipe is pulled tight as his race harness in the fortnight between races. Not wanting to stand still, Felipe finds Fernando working in one of the simulators when he goes looking for him. He could interrupt, means to, but instead decides to switch on a couple of the external monitors, nodding at the cluster of techs huddled by the projector.

Valencia flicks up on the screen in front of him, the tight corners and sweeping straights with a bright red dot sliding to the top right of the screen. Speed, engine revs, temperatures and pressures scroll down one side of the screen; driver monitors - heartrate, g-forces and intakes in coloured graphics on the other.

Alonso's line through eleven is clean, but he's not carrying the pace through turns twelve through fourteen and losing time and speed in the long second sector that he really can't afford. The times aren't bad, Felipe has to admit that - though he'd be later on the brakes before ten and again at fifteen - particularly if, and he glances at the lap counter - Fernando's been in there that long. Felipe watches the laps uncoiling on the monitor - his testing duties are over for the day - and watching Fernando, Fernando's lap when he gets it right is almost hypnotic.

"Watching to see how it's done?" asks the voice behind him, breaking his reverie.

Felipe blinks at the screen display - engine stats static, graphics still, the only moving figure the red count of Fernando's pulse still high but slowing and consciously exhales as he turns. Fernando has shed helmet and gloves, leaving his hands empty and clear, band poking visible from under the cuffs of his racesuit and Felipe swallows, feeling underdressed in t-shirt and jeans.

"Your way is not the only way," Felipe retorts half-heartedly.

"No," Fernando's hand goes to his hair, in an unconscious gesture. "Only the best way."

Felipe wants to argue, but he can see the pulse throbbing in Fernando's neck as he boosts himself onto the table by Felipe, his legs swinging as Felipe loses track of his words. Not again, he rebukes himself, slipping into Portuguese.

"Come on, now," Fernando's face slips into a more sober aspect and he touches Felipe's knee with his boot. "Italian, Felipe, or English."

Neither of them are that fluent, a few words only, in each other's language and a mutual inclination not to try to learn more, as if somehow it would give the other some advantage, some victory, ceding ground that neither of them wants to lose, Felipe thinks. It helps him split the bastard who finished a lap ahead of him in Canada and thought it a good team result with the man who sends him garbled happy text messages after Spain beat Honduras and did his best to swing him off his feet the next morning at work.

"Nothing," he says now, to Fernando's inquiring look. The Spaniard keeps staring at him though pulling words out of Felipe. "Only you're too slow on the throttle in the final left hander and-" he goes on, turning away from the warm body of his team-mate to pull up telemetry, grateful that the long hours over similar screens with Rob mean he can almost do this automatically, almost accept the pressure of the hand Fernando leaves on his shoulder, almost ignore the regular breathing close behind him and almost hold his concentration on what Fernando says, not the low twang of his voice. Almost.

\---

"It's really high up, up here," Felipe says over his shoulder. He turns back to the windows, looking down and down and down some more. Valencia looks so small from up here, and the little people scurrying their way through a Saturday evening trip quickly in dark jackets and high heels. He blinks again and his vision refocuses. In the glass behind him he sees Nick upside-down on the sofa in front of the TV. Jenson is flicking little pieces of chocolate at his mouth. His aim wasn't great at the start of the evening, so Felipe reckons Nick's safe from him for now.

Lewis is picking his way towards Felipe, still holding the darts left over from earlier in the evening while he scrambles down next to Felipe saying, "Looks so small out there, doesn't it."

Felipe accepts the glass of orange from Lewis' other hand - none of them are dumb enough to get hammered the night before a race, even if he's now only ever a social drinker. "Perspective," he says, "And gravity. Like the movie of yours. With the 'Everything true--"

"From a certain point of view," Lewis finishes, grinning. "I can't believe you're quoting Star Wars at me, man."

"I'm not," Felipe argues, stubbornly.

"You so are," Lewis elbows him. "We'll get you on the right side of the force, soon enough."

"No more inter-team bonding," Felipe shakes his head. "For sure, your taste in men is appalling."

A pause. "You want to rewind that one, Felipe?"

What did he say? Oh, right. "Your taste in movies needs some work." Felipe looks at his drink. Lewis wouldn't spike it, and even if he did all Felipe would get is a light buzz. "I think I need to-" He gestures with his glass.

"Sure," Lewis nods. "Good luck tomorrow, right?"

Felipe nods and heads to the kitchen counter. He can hear Jenson telling a lightly snoring Nick that, "..all he's been on about. I mean, we get on, but I'm seeing more of him than I did of Jess, even before all that."

The clunk of glass on table draws Jenson away from his monologue and he tilts his head back. "Hey, Massa. You're going already?"

"You want me to take Nick back?" Felipe asks, looking over at the snoozing test driver.

Jenson gives Nick a speculative poke. "Nah, he'll be alright here. Not as if he needs to make an early start tomorrow." He holds out a hand to Felipe. "Have a good one."

Leaving Jenson's handshake and Lewis' hotel room behind him, Felipe trots up two flights to where he left his room. It's probably still in the same place, but Felipe doesn't try to find it. Instead he lets his feet take him where they will. It's how he finds himself swiping his keycard in slot that isn't his, in a door that's familiar, but likewise not.

Felipe knocks, quietly at first then louder, if he's going to do this he might as well do it properly. That thought is followed on the heels of, but he's really not is he? This is a dumb move and he's seen plenty of those with this man. Another will-

"Hi," he says to the opening door. Fernando is rumpled, hair sticking up and sleep still in his eyes as Felipe greets him.

"Is not morning already," Fernando's question or complaint slips out of his mouth sounding filled with gravel from a bad off.

"No," Felipe says slowly, stepping forward. There's no one that Felipe can see behind Fernando, and he stretches out his hearing, but the only sounds he hears are those of the man standing in front of him, hand tugging at the collar of the pale grey t-shirt he's been sleeping in. That's all he hears.

"So. What's the emergency?" Fernando rumbles, "Fire, flood, big rocks falling from the sky, hmm?"

"No," Felipe says again. He'll get multisyllabic in a moment. He will. "Can I come in?" And, see, there goes a whole sentence.

"Sure," Fernando rubs his hand through his hair and it sticks up like he just got too up close and personal with an electric socket. "Why not?" He backs away from the door and flops back on the bed. Fernando's staring at the ceiling when Felipe turns, remembering to close the door. His fingers on the smooth door handle trigger a memory of another Spanish hotel room with Fernando, and maybe this isn't going to blow up in his face as badly as he'd thought it might.

"You know," Fernando says, from his horizontal position. "When I said come in, I wasn't expecting you meant to hover just this side of the door." He sighs. "Wake me up when you change your mind."

Felipe watches him stretch back with a dramatic yawn. Fernando's arms stretch above his head, pulling his clothes fabric into interesting folds and tension. He watches dark eyes close and flip back open. "No, I can't sleep with you watching me," Fernando tells him, though Felipe knows he can barely tell Felipe's there.

"When isn't someone watching you," Felipe settles himself at the head of the bed, sitting crosslegged and leaning back against the headboard. "Or me? You like the attention."

"I like yours," Fernando mutters as he rolls onto his front and leans up on his elbows. More loudly, "No-one's watching us now."

Felipe feels a flicker of blood vessels that would be a blush at that if he'd fed more recently. He doesn't know, can't tell if Fernando meant him to hear his former statement. It doesn't matter, he can see the same heat in the other man's eyes that's in his. Felipe leans forward to kiss Fernando, to press those lips open and see how deep that Spanish fire goes. He means to, except Fernando's there before him - again - and there's the clash of teeth and chins and-

"Ow," Fernando protests, his hand tentatively pressing at his nose. He's shuffled further up the bed and Felipe can feel the warmth of a bare knee through his trousers.

Felipe can't help the snicker that pulls his mouth open, and doesn't try too hard to do so. Fernando looks up and the glower on his face flickers into a more determined cast. He pushes Felipe back, and Felipe lets himself be pushed, following the pressure of Fernando's hand gripping at his shirt until he comes to a sudden stop and opens his mouth to Fernando's insistent tongue. It slips between his lips and Felipe digs his fingers into Fernando's shoulder, deepening the kiss, pressing himself closer.

Fernando puts a hand to the side of Felipe's head, holding him there. Felipe grins through the kiss, one hand pulling further into the scruff and waves of Fernando's hair. It's not as if he needs to be kept there. The pillow at his back dislodges and thuds to the floor, and Felipe follows it down as far the bed. He tugs and Fernando follows suit, his kiss-bruised team-mate above him. Fernando takes a breath and sits back on his heels; Felipe can still feel their legs all tangled up and twitches underneath him impatiently.

All heavy breaths and large pupils Fernando looks down at Felipe. "Entirely too calm," he says almost to himself and starts to pull at Felipe's shirt. Felipe's really not as he tries to help Fernando with clothing that seemed a lot simpler only hours earlier. The extra hands bump and catch and Felipe, changing his mind, decides that pushing up at Fernando and tugging at his shorts works a lot better.

Later, when Fernando's in the middle of another kiss, fingernails scraping down the back of Felipe's ears - having successfully worked him out of his shirt at the cost of only a few buttons - Felipe manages to work his fingers down and around, one hand around the other man's cock and the other pulling his underwear down and away. Fernando freezes a moment at Felipe's first grip.

His mouth's still on Felipe's, and Felipe groans against him and gives Fernando's cock a slow stroke. This - with Fernando's tongue down his throat - isn't the moment when Fernando should be surprised where Felipe's hands are, okay? And it seems he's not as Fernando starts to move again.

Fernando's hands are straying over Felipe and he moves against his team-mate, just jerking his head to the side when Fernando's thumb slides over a scar. "Not there," Felipe, holding on to precious won coherences.

"Okay," Fernando says against Felipe's skin, redirecting his attention. "Then how about..."

Felipe's already hard when Fernando's tongue flicks against his teeth, the warm pressure against his canines shooting lightning down his spine straight to his dick. He bucks up against the friction that is his team-mate, gasping, "More."

"Wha-?" Fernando pulls his head back and Felipe, hooking his fingers around the back of Fernando's neck, bringing his head back down. Squirming as Fernando's tongue sweeping across the back of his teeth feels like someone has switched on all his nerve endings and Felipe makes incoherent noises, opening his mouth wider. Fernando's moving faster against him and the long, lazy brush against his upper right canine pushes Felipe up and over. He comes, all feeling focussed between his legs and teeth, and bites down.

"Ah," Fernando turns his head and spits out a trace of blood from his bitten lip.

A slow lassitude spreads through Felipe's bones, looking up at Fernando's face. His team-mate, his annoying, entrancing, so alive in that warm body team-mate. Felipe tightens his hand on Fernando and watches him twitch under his hand. Fernando moves frantically against Felipe. Shifting back and against his body and his hands until Fernando's breathing begins to shudder. Hooking his leg around Fernando, Felipe gives a twist of his wrist and Fernando slumps, spent against him.

Fernando doesn't move until Felipe pokes him. "Hey." He gives another prod of Fernando's shoulder. "Hey. I need to move. I'm all sticky." His own voice sounds oddly garbled to him. Sex doesn't usually do that to him, but he feels kinda odd. Fernando rolls over and mutters something.

Scrambling up, Felipe heads for the en-suite bathroom. Cleaning up takes his immediate attention, ignoring the little voice that wanted a repeat performance and wondered if one would happen. He borrows Fernando's towel and ducks his head under the taps. Looking up at the mirror, an old habit he's still got though all he sees is his wavering reflection squinting back at him. It looks different though and Felipe brings up his hands to his face. His face feels out of shape, the press of his fangs distorting his jaw.

Felipe wipes his face with the towel and concentrates. The fangs don't slide back into place. He tries again. Nothing. Pressing his thumbs against his teeth Felipe tries to push them back manually. All it does is cut up his left thumb. Again with cold water. Still nothing.

This is not good. Really it isn't. He has a race this afternoon, briefings with his engineering crew before, and interviews with the press later. He can't hide in here. More than that, and only then does Felipe think to lock the bathroom door, he has a sated Fernando Alonso in the next room. This is not happening to him.

Maybe Fernando is still asleep. Felipe can hear his breathing through the door, trying to ignore the thump of Fernando's heartbeat. He presses up against the door, his eyes closed. Fernando's breathing is slow and regular. Felipe flexes his hand on the door handle.

"Felipe, are you still there?" Fernando's voice comes through the door.

Damn it, where else does Fernando think he's gone? Felipe checks for any windows he hadn't noticed at first. None.

Why does he never have good luck this season? Felipe has half a mind to go through Fernando's contract looking for the clause that gave his team-mate his share. The other half is considering asking Fernando to close his eyes or give him his helmet. He's always suspected Fernando slept with one. And, okay, tonight might have proven that theory wrong but it wasn't like he was paying attention to his surroundings.

"Just give me a minute, okay," Felipe says back. He's still wearing his watch, hell, he's still got his mobile in his pocket. Fuck. He eyes his phone suspiciously. He can get out of this on his own.

"You better not have taken all the hot water," Fernando says.

"No," Felipe tells him, thumbs working quickly. He's changing his mind. Calling in the cavalry. Sending 'Stuck in Alonso's bathroom. Help' and cursing his phone's predictive text function. He wasn't planning on showering now, but jams the water on loudly as he waits for a response.

"You really have a lot of fruit flavoured shampoo," Felipe says, picking up a blue bottle and shaking it. His phone vibrates with a message and he flips it open. 'Congratulations. Maybe boast to me about your conquests when it's not 4am? R' Felipe scowls at the message. Not helpful, doesn't he get- His eye catches on the number. Oh. Not helpful and not Rob. He resends the message to the right number, this time, with a mental note to think of something to tell Rubens later.

"Not really," Fernando answers. "They're all-" And Felipe can almost see the other man's shrug through the wall as he picks up the sleep slurred words. "It's all just stuff."

'Great. Thought about trying the door?' His engineer thinks he's funny, Felipe thinks. He's about to just tell what he thinks about engineers who think they have a sense of humour when his phone shakes out another message. 'On it. Sit tight and TRY not to talk.'

Felipe's spent as much time in the bathroom as he thinks he can get away with, and stolen more of Fernando's hair gel than is probably reasonable. The spikes look good, he thinks, as he ties one towel around his middle and arranges another on his head, obscuring his features. He pushes the door open. Fernando, sprawled across most of the bed, looks up and says, "Hey."

Felipe just nods and grunts. He nudges Fernando's back and the Spaniard shuffles forward a bit. "You don't have a home to go to?" he asks as Felipe sits down.

A knock on the door interrupts whatever Felipe was going to say in response. Which is good, because he doesn't know what that is. The knock repeats itself, and Fernando looks up at Felipe, muttering, "Why don't- Right, right," and he drags himself upright, searching out his clothes. He's decent, if Felipe's eyes still fall to the band of the skin between Fernando's t-shirt and shorts and he has to drag them up to register Fernando's down-down hand motion. Felipe rolls off the bed and switches off the bedside light behind him. He hasn't had to hide like this since he was eighteen and- hey, he can see under the bed from here.

"You know what time it is?" Fernando asks the person who was knocking.

Felipe stretches forward and can make out a pair of white-trainered feet. Not particularly unique in a team whose colours are red accented with white.

"It is early, I know," comes the other voice. Felipe checks his watch. It's barely past five. "But I had this thought. And then this thought was followed by many others which I have written down." The crumple of papers.

The gears click in Felipe's mind - Fernando's engineer come to talk strategy.

"I think now is the time to change our engine codes," Andrea continues. "I heard a whisper from a little silver bird that their surveillance is getting a little--"

Fernando yawns. "Yes, yes," he says. "I will be - in just one minute." He backs away from the door. Felipe hears the sounds of Fernando dressing; the hiss of his zip, the click of flipped open sunglasses, the curse as he stumbles on one of Felipe's shoes. Fernando ducks down into the shadows where Felipe is lying, saying, "We'll do this again," his voice rumbling low in his throat. He nips at Felipe's lower lip. "Okay?" and turns away at a "Alonso?" from the doorway not stopping for an answer.

"Okay, I guess," Felipe replies as the door bangs shut behind Fernando. He really ought to go too, he thinks, early as it is. He's buttoning up his shirt - and mentally billing Fernando for the button repair - when another knock rattles on the door. Felipe freezes. Is he supposed to be here? Is he not? He could have just stopped by to visit his team-mate. This early. When said team-mate is not here.

The knock comes again, and Felipe hears something else, under the rhythm, an almost imperceptible murmur. "Come on, Felipe."

Recognising the voice, Felipe opens the door, and his engineer comes in. Rob hands over the bundle he's carrying under his arm. "Change of your clothes," he says, looking around. Rob perches on the end of the bed, flicking through television channels while Felipe changes.

"I'm done," Felipe says a few minutes later. Dancing squirrels are wearing scarves and swinging each other around the screen in front of them, before Rob flicks a switch and looks up at the driver standing in front of him.

"You're okay." Rob states and Felipe rolls his eyes. He could jump out of the window and okay, it would hurt, but he'd be all right.

"And Fernando?" Rob sounds a little less sure.

"I'm fine, he's fine," Felipe shrugs. Rob doesn't want details, does he? "It was better, I think, he not see me like this," he finishes, opening his mouth wider. His canines are larger, sharper and further forward. His other teeth seem brighter and it seems like there are too many for his mouth.

"Right, right," Rob says, taking out a pocket knife. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry. If you're having more sex, then you'll need to drink more often." He makes a short slice on his left arm. "I didn't think to mention that."

He offers his left arm, pushing up his sleeve and Felipe takes it. Pressing his mouth to the cut, Felipe's eyes close as he drinks. He's not looking at Rob, not looking at anything as his tongue slips into that warmth and Rob says with a hitch in his voice. "You didn't bite him, did you?"

A shake of the head and then Felipe pulls away, giving a last press to the wound on Rob's arm. His fangs retract and Felipe involuntarily breaks into a smile. Not that he was worried about spending the rest of the season waving at the world from the inside of a helmet. "No," he repeats, and pushes his hair back from his eyes.

"Good," says Rob. "Just so long as you know you have to be careful."

Felipe's picked up his old clothes and he's rolling them up as he answers, "I had the safe sex talk a long time ago," with a raised eyebrow.

Rob shakes his head, with a grin, as he pulls the door open. "I know, mate, I know. I've just got a few extra pointers that we need to go over. First, though, this had better not've lost you your competitive edge."

"No," Felipe answers, giving Rob a competitive punch to the arm. "I still want to win just as much."

"That'll do," Rob says, as they walk down the hotel corridor. "Right, so no asking how I know this, okay, and no giving your poor engineer any scarring mental images."

"Okay," Felipe agrees, unthinkingly, before teasing Rob, "You don't think I'm hot?"

A swipe of a key card and Rob shakes his head, "You know what I think of you, Felipe," as he picks up the clipboard left on the desk. "And you know no amount of hair gel is going to make you any less short."

\---

No one is happy after the race is over. No one in red anyway, and it's difficult to remember there's anyone else sometimes. Alonso is shut up in the motorhome fuming and Felipe's sitting glumly looking at lap times. They were faster than this, they were better than this and everyone knows it. It's a different kind of bite to the catastrophe that was Istanbul, but no less painful for all that.

Stefano brushes past him, making for the relative security of the garages. Rob knows he's been in conference with the stewards since the race ended. Since before that too. The set look in his eyes and shoulders doesn't bode well for any kind of good news, so Rob keeps his place on the pit wall. Coming on top of Canada they've not had great luck with the stewards' decisions and wearing Ferrari colours is starting to feel like painting a target on their backs.

Musing on the fate of his team is getting him nowhere, so Rob hops off his seat and heads down the pitlane. The cars are going to be under parc ferme for a while yet, but he wants to check the damage on Felipe's tyres. Eyeballing them will keep him busy and out of the way, he avoids thinking, as the tarmac rolls under his jogging feet.

His pace slows as he reaches the Red Bull garage. The crunched up metal and carbon fibre shell that was Webber's cockpit stares back at him, nose and wing gone, dragging his attention from where he's meant to be.

"She's a mess," Ciaron says, coming out of the shadows of the garage bay. "It'll take a lot to put her back together." He waves Rob forward from where he's stopped, as if an invisible line held across the frontage. "Come on in."

Rob nods. "It looked spectacular." It's not the right words, but he doesn't have those. He drops to the side, keeping his gaze safe on the bodywork; the infamous wing is gone in the crash, but he avoids looking at the floor, the f-duct, the diffuser. He's just a mechanic in front of a broken thing, not a Ferrari man sizing up proprietary property, and he knows better than to provoke a revoked invitation.

Ciaron looks over his car protectively, eyes taking in the fingers hovering just over her. "It looked more than it was," he says, finally.

"Still." Rob takes his eyes off the car to look at the man behind him, who's almost fading into shadow in Red Bull's dark uniform. "I'd bet you'd never thought you'd go back to aeronautics again."

"Not what I was expecting," Ciaron says, stepping forward to run his hand down the smooth side of the car, picking out the undamaged lines automatically.

"No," Rob agrees. With the car in front of him, it's easier to ask than he thought it would be. It's been drummed so hard into him not to speak, not to talk about it, not to use it, and he may have broken the last one, because he couldn't not, but it still comes out sideways. "Webber was alright then?"

"If you saw the crash, then you saw that."

"I know," Rob says, trying for a bit more obvious this time. "I was just thinking. I wondered if you'd helped him out with that."

"He doesn't need me to tell him to duck." Ciaron says, "It's thanks to the mechanics that the car held up as well as it did." Rob reads and nods to the shared recognition in the separation from actually getting their hands dirty.

"You know what I mean," Rob pushes. He has to, right?

Ciaron freezes with his hand on the air intake behind the helmet position. "No. I don't." Rob can almost hear the question - accusation - in that. "You know that's not how we do things here." A pause. "And you're lucky I'm the only one who heard you say that," he finishes with a nod to the empty side of the garage.

"Yeah," Rob agrees, with a sigh. "Forget I said anything."

"Forget what?" Ciaron's eyes fade out, momentarily.

"Thanks."

\---

"I'm right," Fernando says again. Felipe looks up from his paperwork, the printouts which Rob handed him before dashing off. He did read them, but now he's folding them carefully, the first paper plane crumpled in front of him. He scores a fold, biting his tongue in concentration, and wonders if Anna has put in earplugs. It wasn't fair, but...

Felipe lobs his plane. It swoops up and plummets down, clipping the side of Fernando's head.

"Hey!" Fernando looks up at the unexpected assault.

The next plane hits his shoulder, and Felipe can't help but smile at the look that spreads across Fernando's face.

"You little-" It's probably a good thing that Felipe can't understand the rest of what Fernando says. If he did he'd have to take offence; he'd have to fight back and he's too race-tired to do that with this man, in this place. But Fernando approaches at too great a speed for him to decide on folding another dart, and Felipe thinks he really should have stockpiled his ammunition before he launched his assault.

Fernando opens his mouth again, and Felipe prickles in the nearness of his team-mate. The heat and life that's usually so closely banked within Fernando burns so brightly, Felipe half-thinks he'll singe at the touch. He waves a sympathetic hand as Anna makes a hasty retreat and then pokes Fernando in the chest.

The surprise of his action stuns them both into silence, momentarily. They're both looking at where Felipe's finger presses, when Fernando regains his voice, to say, "You're touching me." Like he'd say 'my meatloaf has pineapple in it' or 'the cats are talking to me again'. Not that Felipe has ever heard Fernando say either thing, but if he were to, then that is the same tone of grudging bemusement and disbelief that Felipe would expect.

"Yes." Felipe says, that is something they can agree on. "I thought it would make you quieter."

"I don't come with an off switch," Fernando comes back with. Maybe a volume control though, as his voice is lower, more even now. Felipe doesn't say that though, doesn't want to push those buttons just yet.

"So it's not you who is the robot?" Felipe jokes. No such thing, of course. If there were Ferrari would have one.

"No," Fernando says, consideringly. "I think maybe Hamilton."

Felipe closes his eyes briefly, at Fernando's focus drifting back to his years-ago team-mate and away from the one centimetres in front of him. "Then he needs some recalibrating, I think." He trails his finger up Fernando's breastbone, pausing level with his beating heart.

It's not quite a smile from Fernando, but it's more than a shrug. Felipe will take it with curling of his mouth. He hooks the fingers of one hand in Fernando's belt loops and walks the others up the smooth fabric to pull at Fernando's collar. A flush rolls up Fernando's neck and he catches Felipe's hand, before Felipe can work more than one of his buttons open. Felipe makes a disappointed noise in his throat.

"Not here," Fernando holds his voice steady against the play of Felipe's free hand against his waistband. The scratch of nails against denim tugs against Fernando's sense of not wanting to get caught with his tongue down Felipe's throat in the motorhome, and Felipe sees the moment discretion overpowers desire in Fernando's wide-pupiled eyes.

Felipe leans into the Spaniard's throat, and whispers, "Tonight then, my room," as he runs a palm down the front of Fernando's jeans, grinning at the other man's gasp. "Try not to forget."

\---

Fernando scribbles a signature on a glossy smiling image of himself. "Here you go," he says, smiling at the young girl shuffling her feet and peeking up from under a Renault cap. He takes the red baseball cap from his head and firmly balances it on top of her original one. "We're Ferrari, now."

His earpiece buzzes as he turns to the next person in line. The sky is darkening, and the BMX track closes at sunset. Several handshakes, autographs and one promise to come back and race properly later, and Fernando makes his way back to the hotel shadowed by three Ferrari press officers.

"I think it could work," he says to Alex, keenly. "No?"

Despite Alex's lack of enthusiasm, Fernando shrugs and ignores the discussion of safety clauses in his contract. The off-season, or something, he'll make it work. His path crosses Felipe's by the hotel desk, and Fernando says, "Hey."

Felipe reaches his hand out, and Fernando slaps it with his own. "Have fun?"

"It was..." Fernando starts out on an account of his tour of the bike factory and track, until a sharply suited aide leans in to Felipe with a hissed reminder. Fernando looks Felipe over, noticing the suit and tie for the first time. "And you're all dressed up."

Felipe tilts his head briefly to the side. "I think it's some bank," he gestures with a flick of his hand, "thing."

"Sounds fun," Fernando says. He throws a friendly punch at Felipe's right arm, adding, "Tell me about it later."

Felipe catches his loose fist and holds it. Suddenly uncomfortable he tugs it away and watches his team-mate out through the door. Lately it seems like they only see each other in snatched seconds. If Fernando believed in conspiracies - and okay, sometimes he does - he would think there's something more than attempts by Ferrari to wring out every last sponsor laden moment from their drivers, but he doesn't, so he heads up the stairs, timing how long it takes him.

He showers and pulls on a loose t-shirt his parents sent him after the latest vuelta, local team logos still bright. It clashes with his shorts, but he doesn't feel like being social tonight, so it doesn't matter. Fernando drops down onto the hotel bed, scooping up the remote control with one hand and rolling until he can reach the phone on the bedside table. He orders room service while flicking through channels, settling down to pull apart spicy chicken wings and watch Telecinco. After a few minutes he remembers why he stopped watching this back home. Fernando mutes the television rather than switch channels; Macarena's still hot, Raul too.

It's much later when Felipe clicks his borrowed keycard into his team-mate's door; Fernando's sprawling, three-quarters asleep in the flickering light of the screen. He doesn't move at the dip in the bed or the ghosting of Felipe's fingers down the back of his neck. Felipe moves to follow fingers with teeth and tongue, he leans over Fernando's back, as Fernando comes back to sleepy awareness, feeling firm muscle and the press of cool skin against his back, before there's a flash he can't see and a boom he can't hear follows. A loud thud smacks into the wall behind him and he rolls onto his back as the figure slumping into the wall makes a short, bitten off moan.

"What the hell?" Fernando asks, scrambling for the bedside lamp. The amber glare shows his team-mate sitting flat against the far wall. Felipe is hunching over, his head down as his shoulders curl forwards. He's almost entirely still; Fernando can barely see the near imperceptible vibration, it wouldn't be visible at all if the light wasn't clear and close around Felipe. "Massa?"

Felipe doesn't answer. "Come on," Fernando insists. Standing and stretching he pads over to him. He gives Felipe's arm a gentle shove. "What was- Did you see that?" A dusting of plaster shakes loose and Fernando shakes his head, filling his brain with the concerns of explaining the damage, ignoring the thoughts of how what just happened happened and how Felipe doesn't seem hurt.

"Go away." Fernando has to strain to hear Felipe, has to lean closer to make out the words.

"Felipe," says Fernando, stubbornly staying where he is.

Felipe looks up at him. His eyes have gone pupil-black, his face looks bruised, distorted like he's been in a fight, as if he's taken a punch straight to the mouth. That's enough to unsettle Fernando, the shadow trickle of blood his eyes make out sliding down Felipe's chest is just the frothy fizz on top of the heady champagne. Champagne that he's drunk too quickly, like he hasn't since he was young and seeing stars on the ceiling after his first victory, only more disturbing as he sees Felipe move his left hand to the shadow of his lower torso, hears a soft, squelchy sound and comes up with something wet and dark that Fernando is desperately trying not to think is blood.

"Go now," Felipe says as he brings his fingers up to his mouth. He doesn't taste what is looking too solid for Fernando to define as blood, which is good because he is trying to hold on to the contents of his stomach. Felipe rubs his index finger and thumb together and holds them to his nose. It's the first time since he saw Felipe slumped against the wall that Fernando can be sure he's inhaled.

"I'm going nowhere," Fernando repeats, though his feet take a couple of steps back as Felipe's voice vibrates through the air. "Fuck, Massa."

It's not a giggle that ripples up from his team-mate, but it's close enough that Fernando would normally bait Felipe for it, tease him until he either stormed off or pushed him up against a wall. Felipe tilts his head back, and Fernando would look away if he could when he says, "Maybe later," and Fernando tries to blink, but his eyes won't stop, won't shut as Felipe stands and more of his body slips out of the shadows. There's a bloody burnt wound across Felipe's front, a cross-like shape at an angle almost quartering his chest and dribbling dark and clear fluids.

"I'm not feeling quite myself now," he continues, and Fernando doesn't know how he's still standing up. He should go over and help, go over and steady Felipe and call one-one-two and- But he's doing none of those things, just slowly pacing backwards as Felipe levers himself away from the wall behind him and moves forwards.

There's not room enough to back away, and when Felipe grabs for his right hand he's not fast enough. Felipe turns his hand over and back again; Fernando's heart is hammering against the inside of his chest like it wants to get out. "But I soon will be," Felipe's mutters, jabbing a sharp thumbnail as he opens up a short cut on Fernando's forearm.

Fernando can feel the blood oozing down his arm, but he can't take his eyes off Felipe's. They're completely black, when he feels a wrench to his shoulder and he's falling backwards; there's enough of the driver in him to wonder how the strain will affect him at Silverstone. It's maybe the first time in long minutes he's thinking about anything other than his very immediate future. Felipe's still standing in the middle of the room, staring at the floor, his voice laced with frustration as he argues with himself, "Stop. I won't." He looks at Fernando, dark eyes ring-edged with brown, and forces out, "Help?" before he turns and ruins any chance that Fernando had of getting his room deposit back.

"Felipe?" Fernando freezes for a second, before he lurches forward onto his knees. He shuffles towards the window, not wanting to trust his legs to carry him - not yet - and carefully avoids the shards of glass still left in the window as he looks through and down.

Four floors seems a lot higher from this angle, and Felipe's body looks awfully still, one leg folded underneath his body pointing in a direction that's painful even to Fernando all the way up here. Fernando's on his hands and knees gasping, he has to go- he has to- he has to do something. Run, call for help, why hasn't anyone seen what's happened, he thinks as his hotel door bangs shut behind him. Gravity's a help as he opts for stairs over the lift, feet touching one step in three, if that.

The paving's a mess of tessellated orange tiles that hurts the brain, as Fernando moves closer to the body on the ground. Felipe's not moving, not breathing and yet he's still nervous - he won't admit to being scared, not now and not before - as he looks down at Felipe. His eyes are a familiar brown again, the gashing wound still visible and Fernando jumps back with a yelp as Felipe blinks. His eyes flick to his left arm, then haze over as Fernando watches.

Felipe's wrist half-turns and silver glints in the security night lighting. Fernando crouches down, cursing as he steps on a shard of broken window, and tugs at it.

The metal bends at an unseen hinge and Fernando squints at the engraving. He's seen Felipe wearing it before, the other man had always seemed a bit awkward about it, so Fernando had assumed it was something to do with his accident, that Felipe didn't like being reminded of a past weakness; Fernando wouldn't. It's in Italian with a matching translation into English 'In case of emergency call' and then a number Fernando doesn't recognise. This is definitely an emergency, Fernando thinks, but is this whatever medic alert system would be expecting? He thinks not, but then he has to do something. Ferrari are expecting them back tomorrow to travel up to Silverstone for the first day of the race meeting; he can hardly say his team-mate flew across the room, then attacked him before jumping out of window and that he left Felipe's should-be-dead body at the edge of a hotel car-park.

It rings and rings and Fernando is about to discard the attempt at a call for help when someone answers in gruff Italian. The voice sounds kinda familiar to Fernando, but he's not thinking too clearly, or at all, when he reports, "There's been an accident."

The rest of the story is drawn out of him slowly, Fernando doing his best to stick to what he knows for sure, the stillness, the injuries - to Felipe and to himself - the window, and tries to avoid any questions of why. For sure he doesn't want to answer those questions, not like this, sitting next to broken glass, watching the broken body of his team-mate, not sure if he wants to see it move or if he'll lose his nerve and flee at the sight. He doesn't like the feeling that lodges in his gut and he throws a look at Felipe, if he were here he'd tell him so.

Felipe's eyes flicker again as Fernando recites the address of the hotel. It's the same one they use when they're in the country for promotional work, only a few miles south of London. Normally they'd have moved up to the circuit by now, but their schedules have been hectic, and Fernando had chosen not to protest much, not wanting to share Felipe with the rest of the machinery of a Grand Prix weekend. At least there's no chance of one of his championship rivals wandering up and asking what he can't answer.

He sits and waits, the "Sit and- Just don't do anything. Don't go anywhere," still echoing in his ears. Fernando scuffs his trainers against the ground as he nerves himself to take a look at Felipe. The injuries look better than they first did, he thinks, he hopes. He reaches out and pokes an index finger in Felipe's side and jerks his hand back swearing as something clings to him, moving across his skin like cold liquid plastic. Fuck, he giggles, his team-mate's the Terminator?

"What are you?" escapes from his mouth, not sure whether fascination or fear tugs the words out.

It's still not quite light and if nothing happens soon, Fernando knows he will have to do something. Felipe's still changing, but the pace is slowing; the creep of flesh is almost imperceptible now.

He hears the distant bang of car doors before the rhythm of running feet echoes round the corner of the hotel. The figure's moving quickly, silhouetted against the dawning light, and Fernando can't quite make it out. Fernando stands and places himself between the intruder and Felipe, knowing it won't stop someone seeing for more than a couple of seconds.

It doesn't.

But at least it's a familiar figure that elbows him aside like he's not even there, Fernando thinks, as he watches Felipe's engineer drop to his driver's side. Rob's hands trace Felipe's pulse points, checking his neck, his chest all the while the engineer mutters in English, his voice just out of Fernando's hearing, not out of Felipe's though, as Fernando sees a focusing coherence in his eyes.

Fernando tugs at Rob's shoulder. He needs to know what's going on, Felipe needs fixing, they need not to be here now.

Rob looks up, "Right, we need to go," he says to Fernando's attempts at conveying urgency. He pulls a set of keys from his back pocket. "You'll need to drive, all right?"

Taking the keys, Fernando nods his agreement. "But what's going on?" he asks as Rob pulls Felipe over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. It clearly takes effort, the engineer staggers under the weight for the first few steps, and Felipe's head bounces despite their best efforts at stealth and speed. Fernando winces at that, and at the mess that's visible of his hotel room from the car park. He thumbs the keys randomly at cars, Rob either too out of breath or concentration to do more than nod in the general direction of what Fernando finds to be a small blue Volvo. He doesn't immediately recognise it - must be a model not sold in Italy or Spain, but the driver's seat is where he belongs no matter the car and he shuffles round to see Rob laying Felipe down across the backseat.

"Just go," Rob says, and Fernando pulls out, makes a left and then another, his gaze flicking between Felipe in the rear view mirror and the road before him.

"So where now?" he asks, after over-taking a green van too sharply. Felipe rocks forward against the seatbelt across his legs and Fernando winces as Rob catches him.

"You know the way to Northampton?" Rob asks from behind him, and Fernando twitches.

"No," he says, "But for this, at least, I don't need to know." And he starts keying into the car's GPS. "And after this you will tell me what's going on? And Felipe- And Massa will be okay?"

"If Felipe's all right at the end of this, I'll tell you whatever you want to hear."

\---

It looks worse than it is. Rob knows that. Tells himself it when he pulls Felipe's legs straight before the bones heal crooked, tells himself again when he presses Felipe's side and feels it give. "How far?" he asks.

A worried Alonso - looking as subdued as Rob remembers seeing him says, "Four- four floors." Felipe's conscious though, and Rob wishes he didn't hear him say, "Enough."

The seatbelt light glares red as Rob undoes it, pulling the cord tight around Felipe before reaching for the first aid kit. He flinches at the stab of erythropoietin in the syringe. He'll feel that later. "Lucky you're short," he says to his driver, and Felipe's eyes flick up at the sound. "Don't move, okay." He'll heal, but Felipe's low enough, dry enough, that it might take too long, might stall completely, a car without enough fuel to make it through the final lap, not enough to take him where he needs to be. And, well, that's what Rob's for, right?

Hoping really hard that Fernando's keeping to the speed limit, Rob takes out a clean surgical blade and lays it by his arm. He ties a band against his arm and thigh, adjusting blood flow before he makes the sharp cut, muscles clenching tight as he repeats the motion. He watches Felipe turn his head and lets his hand settle in Felipe's hair. It's almost relaxing - the familiar pull and pressure, but Rob still holds on tight.

\---

Hands on the steering wheel Fernando isn't eavesdropping. He isn't, and if people would just tell him things...

"Yeah, boss," he hears Rob says, and a quick glance shows he's talking into a cell phone. A quicker one shows Felipe's head is resting in his lap, enough life in his team-mate that wasn't only a few minutes ago.

"Yeah," A pause. "You know that thing you made me promise never to talk to you about. No, not that one, everyone knows that. Well, almost everyone. Or that. The other, other other thing. Yes, that's it."

"No," and Fernando can read the edge in the engineer's voice. "No details. I know. There needs to be some clean up at the hotel." He listens as Rob gives a few more details before the phone conversation ends.

Fernando asks, "So everybody knows?" Except me. "About-" He jerks his head at Felipe.

"No," Rob shakes his head, carefully. "Stefano knows there's stuff that goes on, but... Mostly, people don't. Everyone loves plausible deniability." His head flops backwards and his voice slows. "Felipe's a secret. He's special."

"I know that," Fernando snaps, on the outside of another secret, and accelerates. "I just don't know how."

\---

From this angle, Felipe can't see much. The engine's off, they've stopped moving. He could move his head, but he doesn't want to. A familiar slow pulse echoes under his ear, his teeth are wet and he can't feel the burning pain that was trying to cut him in half.

"Hey," he whispers.

The hand on the back of his head stills and Felipe would nudge Rob if he wasn't so tired. "You're an idiot sometimes, you know that," his engineer says, quietly.

"Worked," Felipe protests.

"Next time pick something else," Rob says, as Felipe watches how Rob's throat moves with the words.

"Worked," he repeats, stubbornly. "'m not listening."

"Never do, mate," he hears Rob say. "If I wasn't used to it by now..."

Felipe decides the look crossing Rob's face is rueful smile rather than disappointment, but still feels the need to explain. "It hurt," he says, crunching up his face in concentration. "I didn't want to hurt 'nando and I had to be sure."

"You were," Rob tells him, "Just think first next time." Felipe feels the knock on the car door more than he hears it but ignores it as Rob looks up.

"'kay," Felipe's slipping back into a painless sleep as he says, "'n you catch me," voice fading out of Rob's hearing.

\---

The chances of not being recognised at a service station only a few miles south of the circuit, days before a Grand Prix, were never good, Fernando thinks, as he tugs his shirt straight and runs his hands through his hair, trying to smooth it down. Not for any of them, and as the only one who's not congealed with blood, he carries back newspaper, paper towels, disinfectant and alcohol. And gummi worms. Those are for him, maybe for Felipe if he asks nicely.

Fernando knocks against the window with a spare elbow - a warning before he pulls the door open, wishing he had three hands.

Rob climbs out of the car, leaving Felipe horizontal with his eyes half-shut. He takes the disinfectant from Fernando and dashes it over his right arm, trying to keep the swearing under his breath. Fernando catches that out of the side of his vision, he can't stop looking at Felipe; his team-mate looks punch-drunk and like he picked a fight with someone bigger and stronger, maybe several someones. He cocks his head back, looking at Fernando, and says, "What?"

Fernando isn't sure what to say, how to squash - you scared me when I thought you'd hurt me and then did it again when I thought you'd done worse to yourself and while I think I'm glad you're still around I'm trying not to think about the how of that - into Spanish, let alone Italian or English. He settles for a nod, and tosses the sweets at Felipe, who snatches them out of the air, while he says, "Don't get used to me driving you everywhere."

Felipe's pulling the packet apart, when he answers, "Fernando Alonso trusts me to drive him around, now?"

Fernando snorts at that, because some things don't change. "Trust you to drive me crazy, maybe."

"That works," Felipe tells the green and red snake he's holding. He opens his mouth and drops the sugared coil of gelatine into it, and Fernando can see scrapings of red around Felipe's teeth and he needs to. He really needs not to be here right now.

A few steps away and the sound of heavy traffic draws him to the metal barriers overlooking the A43. He's not the only one, Felipe's engineer has found a perch on a barrier, looking over at the car holding his charge, while Fernando loses himself in the traffic, lorry, lorry, car, car, car.

"So," Rob says, and Fernando turns to look at him. The man sitting in front of him raises his hand up as if to set a secure channel before remembering he isn't wearing his habitual headset. "Any questions?"

Fernando can't help it. He laughs. He looks at their surroundings, over at the car, and it may be more of a hysterical hiccup, but he laughs. "Questions?"

Rob lets him let go for a minute, before he takes - first one of Fernando's hands and then the other, turning it, eyes running up his arms to his neck. "Okay," he says, "No injuries, no fever, no bright lights or headaches?"

"Nothing," Fernando says, wanting to be irritable, but flinches away when Rob's inspection reaches his left shoulder. "You're not m- I'm not your driver, not your project."

"Just bruising there," Rob muses as he pokes Fernando, "No broken skin. You'll be fine. And you're not daft enough to think I'd forget my loyalties-"

"-where your bread is buttered-" Fernando interrupts.

"-but I'm the only one here," Rob finishes, "And it's not as if we're not on the same team."

"So if I was still Renault-" Fernando prompts him.

"Left you at the side of the road, miles back, of course." Rob says and Fernando is mostly sure he's joking as he nods his agreement.

"So, my- Felipe is a vampire," Fernando wants it spelled out in words of one syllable, maybe two. "With the blood, and the staking in his chest."

Rob's eyes flick up at Fernando, arms folded over his chest, his gaze unreadable for a minute. "Near enough."

"So that's a yes," Fernando presses, dropping to squat on his haunches by the other man.

"Drinks blood, better sight and hearing and faster than you or I could imagine," Rob pauses, and Fernando knows there's more to it than that, so he keeps his mouth shut and Rob continues, "If you want to keep sleeping with him-" and there's enough lack of surprise in his voice that Fernando can tell Rob didn't just figure that out tonight, "then you're better off ditching any clothes with big fucking crosses on them." He reaches out to tap the logo on Fernando's shirt, alpha and omega of the Asturias shield picked out in gold on blue.

Fernando rocks back on his heels, dodging the touch, and saying, "But there's no such thing as vampires. They're mythical. Made up stories. Not true." He's not sure he believes himself, regardless of whether he sounds convincing to anyone else, but he doesn't want to bend, doesn't want to admit that.

"I wouldn't want to be the one to tell him," and Rob nods towards the Volvo, "that. People get a bit fussy when you try to tell them they're metaphysically impossible."

The ground under Fernando's feet is as secure as the world beneath him has ever been. He thinks there's something wrong in that, but reaches a hand down to steady himself against it. "So Massa is a creature of the night."

Rob shrugs. "If you like."

"Whether I like it or not, it seems," Fernando retorts. He frowns, "This is not part of the Ferrari team, no? It's not something I signed up for."

"No, you don't have to be undead to ride the prancing horse," Rob says dryly. "No contracts in blood. Did you think Kimi and Michael drove with fangs behind their helmets?"

If it wasn't for this season, then Fernando might be tempted to think Schumacher wasn't human, but the last days make it harder to joke. "Hey," Fernando protests, he thinks he's handling this pretty well. "Yesterday I thought Felipe was human, a person not a-" He waves his hand.

Rob stands at that and stuffs his hands into pockets. "He's the same man, the same driver, and given the chance he can still drive the boots off anyone." The engineer's talking to his shoes as much as he's speaking to Fernando.

"Almost anyone else," Fernando corrects, despite realising this isn't the time or place to get into this. Still. Not him.

Rob's not listening, though, and Fernando follows him back to the car. He pulls open one of the rear doors automatically. Felipe's sitting up now and looking at him as he buckles up. Fernando remembers what he was told about Felipe's hearing and wonders how much he heard. He glances at his watch, they'll be a little late into the circuit, and the pace of the car on the minor roads and the jams feels slow. Anyone else driving feels like that to him.

Fernando closes his eyes when Felipe starts to say something. He cracks open one eye and says, "I need to concentrate, on my race and strategy."

Felipe looks like he wants to say something, probably to point out it's only just Thursday and Fernando will have time for that later. It's not something Fernando wants to hear now and he closes his eyes again. Thankfully, Felipe doesn't push it and they make it to the circuit without any more revelations.

The whirl of interviews and publicity picks them up from the moment they bang shut the car doors; Fernando pulls on his race face and lets himself slide up and away from Felipe and back into a world that's made sense to him for almost ten years.

\---

It's a small world though. A score or so of drivers, more team personnel, media representatives and people who might be wrapped in a cocoon of thousands of people wearing t-shirts proclaiming their allegiences, but they're far enough distant that it's difficult enough to ignore someone who's part of it.

Fernando isn't doing that, not this time, but if he were it wouldn't be easy. He doesn't see blood dripping from Felipe's distorted jaw when his team-mate waves from across the garage, but now the relief's worn off he remembers it, the image vieing with more positive ones - the other man's fingers trailing down his neck and following the path with his tongue - whether Felipe's around or not.

So, he's just taking a moment between the first free practices - the lesser formulae have the track and the pitlane if not the garages - and he's not needed inside the car. Andrea has the basics of the set up down already and Fernando will be needed for the fine tuning only this afternoon.

He's not hiding from anyone or avoiding glances from the other side of the garage that he can feel trailing up his spine as the hairs at the back of his neck rise. He picks up his helmet, stuffs in his gloves and trots out through the back, narrowly dodging the trip hazard maze of extension cords.

Cameras snap and flicker, following him down the paddock, but Fernando ignores them with the ease of long practice and a half smile.

"There you are," a voice calls from across the way. A blur of black and yellow comes to an abrupt halt beside him and Robert nods at him. Fernando reaches out a hand and Robert claps it, bringing a water bottle up to his mouth with the other and gurgles a greeting around it.

"Easy there," Fernando says, tapping the bottle away from Robert's mouth. "Save the vodka until after the race."

Robert looks at him and cocks an eyebrow. "Vodka?" he repeats.

"Or is it rum and coke?" Fernando prods, the ease of falling into familiar routines with Robert pulling an real almost-smile onto his face.

He's continuing to list drinks, steadily more obscure, with Robert pulling out further expressions of dismay at his lack of taste. He knows where this is heading and so does Robert, finishing with, "Just so as it's not-"

"Red Bull," they finish together, snickering, and Fernando snatches his friend's drink, downing and draining it dry. And if there's a little edge of manic to his smile then Robert is good enough not to say anything. It's what Fernando likes about him, Robert's ability to shut up when necessary. To be a friend when he needs one and still someone he can race against; he's not sure which - if either - Felipe is now.

\---

"I need to talk to him," Felipe says.

Rob looks up from his laptop, and knocks it into screensaver mode as he eyes his driver. "Are you sure about that?" Neither of them needs to specify who - or what - they're talking about, and in a hospitality area that's the next best thing to public that's probably a good thing.

"Yes," Felipe replies, definitely. "I need to be sure I-. Yes."

"You saw he was fine on the way up," Rob tells the spinning graphic in front of him.

"I know he's still in one piece," Felipe agrees, without giving up his point. He remembers the last section of the journey; it's just disconcerting how it's less vivid than the memory of the brand on his torso tearing him in half and the urge to do the same to Fernando, to make it stop. "That, is not what I'm worried about."

"Then why're you talking to me?" Rob asks, "Sounds to me as if you should be looking for someone else."

Felipe pulls the chair next to Rob's closer and drops down onto it. "Fernando is a hard man to catch hold of," he says, not including any more details than that. Even after everything, he knows he doesn't need to.

"He might need a bit of time," Rob tries, and Felipe knows his engineer is just trying to help, but...

There's a stubborn set to his jaw and his eyes as Felipe shakes his head. "We need to settle this," he says. "He can have time later."

Rob sighs, and Felipe would bet there is eye-rolling at least on his inside, and looks at Felipe, "I suppose, if it'll get your mind back on the race."

"It will," Felipe promises easily.

\---

It takes until later that evening for Rob to find the time to look up from the Silverstone upgrades. The front wing endplates are finally sitting properly, he thinks, frowning at the stubborn tenths of a second that Felipe still has to make up on his team-mate. He rubs his eyes and bundles up the traces he's been working on, he'll take them back to the hotel and look over them again when his eyes have uncrossed.

There's a low murmur from further in the Ferrari motorhome, and Rob sticks his head round a half-open door. A couple of techs are staring at very similar looking numbers to those he has tucked under one arm, and Andrea is talking tyre strategy with Fernando.

"Can I borrow him a minute?" Rob asks his fellow engineer.

Andrea blinks away the haze of numbers that almost perpetually surrounds him. "We're almost done here," he says and nods. "You'll bring him back, yes?"

Rob takes a moment to think about that and then tells Andrea, "Probably."

"What is it?" Fernando asks, when they're almost to the motorhome doors.

The clear glass behind him shows the last fingers of a late sunset behind Fernando, backlighting him in red. Rob pauses before he even starts and thinks he maybe should have rehearsed this, or found an appropriate self help leaflet or something. He'd've liked to've had one when he first found out all- this. Instead, there's only him saying, "You need to talk to Felipe."

"He's okay, yes?" Fernando checks.

"Good as new," Rob tells him.

"Then there's nothing to talk about," Fernando responds, defensive.

"Nothing," Rob says. "Then maybe you need to tell him that."

"We're fine," Fernando insists, and pushes open the door. "He's fine, I'm fine, we're all fine and all here to do a job of work for the team and of course he knows that."

\---

"Sorry, I'm late," Felipe says, pushing the door closed behind him. He threads his way through the other drivers - there's a seat next to Fernando that he takes, flips round and sits down upon, folding his arms on the chair back. "Did I miss anything?"

"No, you're fine," Rubens says from the front of the room. The drivers' briefing is more than halfway over, and Felipe slips into the rhythm of discussion easily. Most of it concerns the minor layout changes to the track, which most everyone is happy with after the running so far and the rubbering in of the track. The Hispania guys are bickering with Heikki about something that Felipe's missed - but he's sure someone will tell him if he needs to know.

He nudges Fernando with an elbow, and nods across the room. Vettel is sitting about as far away from Webber as it's possible to get while staying in the same room, a defiant cast to his features, while the Australian - Felipe's never really appreciated the saying 'looking daggers' before, but now he sees it.

"Trouble on the front row, I think," Felipe whispers to Fernando.

His team-mate stills as Felipe leans in, then swallows and says, looking ahead, "Maybe. At least they are on the front row."

Felipe shrugs. They always knew Silverstone to be a Red Bull circuit, but the almost a second difference makes beating them in the race an unlikely, if not impossible, result. Especially from seventh, his treacherous brain adds. "We just need a good start," he says. "And a bit of luck."

"Hopefully, this wing drama," Fernando says, and Felipe can hear the air quotes around the words, "will be good luck for us and bad for them."

"Okay guys," Rubens calls out. "That's it unless anyone wants to persuade the Mclaren boys to give us a song."

A chorus of groans meets that suggestion and Lewis and Jenson try to take up less space in their seats at the far left.

"No?" Rubens shrugs, "Then I guess we're done here." He shrugs an arm round Jenson's shoulders and Felipe hears him ask "What other talents have you been hiding from me?" as the roomful of drivers slowly empties, dispersing them to garages and motorhomes, work and play.

Felipe reaches out for Fernando as his team-mate stands. He doesn't have to grab him though, as Fernando turns, keeping a distance between them and asks, "So, how did it go with Charlie?"

Felipe blinks a little at that, he hadn't realised Fernando knew where he'd been. The summons from the race and medical directors had come close enough after qualifying that he'd only had time to let some of his crew know before he was being poked and prodded at the medical centre. "It was okay," he says. "Just a check up, I guess, making sure everything is still working after a year."

Fernando nods slowly and his gaze flits around the room. There's no-one here, just the two of them and an untidy array of plastic chairs. "No problem with," he says, "With your..."

"No," Felipe says, "He can tell that I am fit to race." He looks at Fernando, "And that's all they need. It's not like the regulations say you must be exactly alive to race."

"I suppose," Fernando agrees, slowly. The thoughts turning in his brain are so loud Felipe can almost hear them. He comes to a visible decision, and says, "I have to go."

"You're sure about that?" Felipe lets the question roll out of him, looking up at Fernando from his seated position. He hooks a foot around the back of Fernando's ankle and runs one hand up the side of the other man's leg. If he pulls just right then Fernando should fall right into him. If he doesn't- well there'll be time to catch the Spaniard before he hits the ground. He won't have to hide that part of himself from Fernando now.

"I'm not a necrophiliac," Fernando bursts out and then looks as if he would really like to rewind the last few seconds.

Felipe blinks, the grin a reflex that he knows will irritate his team-mate - liking everyone to take him as seriously as he does himself - but really. "And I'm not exactly dead, but that is good to know," he says, "Now if I find any corpses then I will know who not call to offer them a date."

"You find a lot of dead bodies?" Fernando asks, looking like he's mostly not taking Felipe seriously except for those uncomfortable thoughts around the edges of his brain.

"I guess it is too early to joke about the dead, then?" Felipe says, watching Fernando nod. He's probably right.

"For sure," Fernando says, sounding surer than Felipe would like him to be and Felipe can feel his breathing's quickening too, and not in the good way. He steps back, quickly untangling his leg from Felipe's and makes a few steps towards the door before he stops. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"Later it is then," Felipe says to the open door. That could have gone better.

\---

The car is good. The car is fine, improving, faster and a dozen other adjectives that mean little or nothing when the rest of the world is out to get you, when your start is slow and hectic all at once, when overtaking another driver is an exercise in futility even if you make it past, when all the team can tell you is to stay out, stay where you are, keep going, keep pushing, come in for a penalty because you can't return a position to a car that's falling backwards and out of the race. Robert and other explanations will have to wait, you have a race to focus on, a drive to try and salvage.

"No more radio for the rest of the race please, no more radio."

The start is good. The start goes well, better, faster and a few position gains that mean little or nothing when your team-mate and the car that carries him turns and touches you, when you feel your wheel and your car and your race is broken, if not your heart, when time drags on in a limping grind and you struggle to overtake the next man and the next while the man who you've seen so close and clear, and who maybe won't forget or forgive that he never saw you like that still finishes out of your reach.

"I'll talk to Alonso to find out why he has touched my car. You really must not touch your team-mate's car."

\---

"It is not so good," Fernando says into a microphone, tired under a Ferrari cap. He's speaking in English to one of the clutch of reporters that surround the circus at the end of the race, before he shuffles on and Felipe steps up in his wake.

Fernando doesn't look back, but there's not enough time for Felipe notice if it's anything more than the normal herding of driver onto the next photo opportunity, the next interview, before he switches from Italian and begins the next summary of this race and hopes for the Ferrari performance in the next.

He still hasn't spoken to Fernando properly later when the Ferrari motorhome is late packing up on Sunday evening. Hasn't said much to him the whole weekend, and he just wants to make the other driver stand still, to look at him, speak to him, not practice his magically never being in the room as his team-mate skills. So, Felipe knows he could go now. His debrief with his crew and with Rob was over hours ago. He tells himself again, as he told his harried, disbelieving engineer an hour ago, that he's staying around to help out.

It's as true then as it is now, which is to say, not really. Felipe thinks it was Anton who put him on the stool he's perching on, and told him to let his team do their job, "We don't drive the car for you, hmm?" It's quiet in here, as if all the words have been scraped out of Ferrari and pasted on their outsides for all the world to see. Felipe can hear the distant thwang of instruments over the murmur of the remaining crowds as the concert starts up.

The pitlane is full of people doing their jobs, and for as long as those jobs don't involve him Felipe can scramble up onto the pit wall. He gives a quick wave to the last few fans in the stands, but then closes his eyes and leans back against the wire mesh. He concentrates until he would swear he can make out the far voices. He doesn't usually do this, prefers to pretend he's the same person he always was, but sometimes it's nice, having a thing he can do better than anyone, a thing that's just-

"So, you are asleep already," says an accented voice that wouldn't sound so harsh if Felipe was being just himself; as it is it distracts him enough to lose his balance, and he flails out his arms.

"Or maybe not," it continues, reaching out an arm that Felipe takes long enough to steady himself.

Vettel frowns momentarily at his grip, but the cloud passes quickly enough that Felipe hardly has time to wonder if he accidentally hurt his fellow driver. Felipe nods a thank you, but can't muster a congratulations on the other driver's race. "No time to sleep in the race," he shrugs it off.

"Really?" Vettel bites his lip into a frown, "That's not how you do things at Ferrari?" He looks at Felipe inquiringly, "Then how did you end up with a puncture, unless you were trying to take each other out."

"No," says Fernando from behind Vettel. "We leave that for the Red Bulls." He walks round Vettel and drapes an arm over Felipe. "And their number one-" A pause. "-and number two drivers." Fernando's smile sloshes up against his eyes as he looks at Vettel.

"Maybe I should go," Vettel drawls out the words.

"Maybe," Fernando agrees. "We wouldn't want to keep you from all the victory celebrations."

"And you from, was it fourteenth or fifteenth today?" Vettel jabs back.

"The Ferrari was the fastest car out there," Felipe chips in, old team loyalties ground into his bones.

"And our car is still improving," Fernando says stolidly, with the steadiness of having repeated the phrase a dozen times already today.

If Felipe can hear it Vettel surely can, "Of course," he says, "It would be hard work to make any worse. Unless you want to give Hispania some competition." He waves a hand in salute at Fernando, nods at Felipe and then disappears into a gaggle of dark-shirted Red Bull personnel. He turns and squints at the two Ferrari drivers before he's out of sight and into his own garage.

Fernando drops his arm from Felipe's and boosts himself onto the pitwall, looking down at him with his legs dangling. He's changed out of his racegear already, and though he looks good in the red polo shirt and shorts Felipe sighs. Other than his free head and hands, he's still carrying the weight of the race on him as well as the layers under his racesuit and he reaches out to still the ra-ta-ta-tapping of Fernando's trainered heels on the concrete wall.

His foot stills for a moment and then Fernando jerks it up, tucking it in, until he's sitting cross-legged. Felipe's grip tightens just for a second before he lets go, but not before he feels and hears Fernando's pulse waver momentarily. He doesn't say anything though and Felipe leans back, gazing down at the first corner.

"It's not the same," Fernando says, abruptly. He's not looking at Felipe, finding something to hold his focus somewhere, anywhere, else.

Felipe steps back, in front of Fernando, laying his hands on his team-mate's knees as he tries to scoop up his gaze. They're warm under his palms as he throw out, "Silverstone and Valencia. Ferrari and Red Bull. Me and you." Because Fernando doesn't get to act the wounded party in this one. Not and ignore Felipe as if he was made of furniture.

Fernando cocks an eyebrow at that. "One - of course not, and if you think that I don't know how you were driving the right way round the circuit today. Two - the same, and no fast talking German had better convince you otherwise. And three - eh." He finishes with a shrug.

Really? Fernando thinks he has so little a grasp of team loyalties, and... Felipe answers, "Would have been closer to the front going the other way. Would have been even more so if my- you hadn't touched my car."

Now Fernando's looking at him. Staring hard enough that Felipe thinks maybe he's trying to skewer him to the ground. "I didn't."

"You did."

"Didn't." Fernando juts out his jaw stubbornly.

"I was there, and you did." Felipe repeats, resisting the urge to stamp his foot like he's five again.

"Then you should be more careful," Fernando says, and pushes himself off the wall. He must be expecting Felipe to step back before he lands, but Felipe doesn't. They're standing close enough that Felipe can feel Fernando breathe, can see something in his eyes flash before his team-mate steps back and around him.

Fernando's still close enough that only Felipe hears the next words. "What does it even matter? I knew it wouldn't even break you." He turns and makes it a few steps in the direction of the garage before Felipe's brain starts working again - 'on purpose' echoing between his eardrums - and he clamps a hand down on Fernando's shoulder and brings him to a sudden halt.

"Alonso," Felipe revs out like a faulty four-stroke. "Listen to me."

His team-mate pivots on one foot, and says, "It was a racing incident, Massa, nothing else. What goes on inside the car is all that matters there."

"And what goes on outside?" Felipe checks. He knows he won't like the answer, but it's not until he hears Fernando say, "Is separate from the race," like he - Felipe - is the strange one for not being two different people in and out of the car, that he realises he doesn't believe it either.

"And I'm no different from another driver?" he asks.

"No," and Felipe thinks he sees something flicker behind Fernando's eyes. Maybe. "Not behind the wheel."

"And you would have done the same thing to them?" Felipe asks again, moving closer to Fernando.

"If they had been where you were?" Fernando shrugs. "Probably."

"And they would break just as easily?" he finishes. "And come back together like nothing happened?" Felipe's wound up like he's just been spat out of a tyre gun. Fernando's had a knack for it before, but before it used to be fun. More fun than this.

"You really want to do this here?" Fernando asks, looking up and down the pit lane. It's not exactly crowded, and no-one's obviously taking any notice of them, but Felipe realises that might not last for long. Even without Fernando adding, "And, for sure, I thought you wanted your secrets kept close."

"Which one?" Felipe asks rhetorically. "You or-" He shrugs.

"Fine," Felipe grits out, taking Fernando's arm and heading to the Ferrari garage. They can cut through to the motorhome and find an empty room and the discretion of a team with more and bigger secrets than the ones they hold between them.

An ache drops from his shoulders as they reach the shade of the garage. "Heads up!" one of the guys calls and Felipe instinctively shoves Fernando forward, stumbling into his team-mate as something clatters to the ground behind them.

"What was that?" Fernando asks, turning round.

Someone's bleeding, Felipe thinks. "Blood," he says under his breath. He doesn't say anything more though. Instead he joins Fernando in looking at the fallen Ferrari hoarding and the embarrassed looking guy holding a cut hand up to his mouth. Mike, Felipe thinks that's the name, waves off the snickering help of two of the engineers, and Felipe turns his attention back to Fernando, saying, "Even the building, is out to get us."

"The next race will be better," Fernando assures him. They head through the gutted garage quietly, and are out into the paddock before Felipe hears him mutter, "It has to be."

Felipe doesn't answer him. Fernando's not really speaking to him, he's just hearing his team-mate. For now, though, he can try to give him the illusion he shattered along with Fernando's window.

\---

Stefano's talking - a stream of words flowing into his mobile phone - when they reach what's safely, if temporarily, Ferrari territory. He looks up as they jump over the knee-high wooden fences that haven't been taken down yet, and pulls the handset away from his ear, covering it with one hand.

"Ah," he says, gaze shifting from one driver to the other. "Friends again, now?" he continues, not leaving enough time for either of them to answer. "Good, you know we are all a team, all in this together. It's so much better when everyone kisses and makes up."

Felipe applies an elbow to Fernando, nudging the look of surprise off his face with a barely audible "figure of speech".

Fernando nods, but Stefano's attention's drawn back to Felipe - hearing the voice if not the words - a mild admonishment on his lips regarding Felipe's behaviour, "We cannot always be bailing you out," he continues. "Remember, you are a Ferrari driver off and on the track and even in your hotel rooms."

His team-mate shrugs and makes apologetic sounding noises, but Fernando isn't really paying attention. He nods a goodbye to their boss and ducks in through the sliding doors, Felipe following at his heels, or shepherding him, but Fernando prefers to think the latter and so does. The black carpeting dulls their footsteps even on the stairs, and they stop at the room-spanning window, the glare of the sun bouncing through glass.

Looking at Felipe isn't a hardship, as his team-mate tugs down the top half of his gear and knots it about his middle, he doesn't get enough chance to do more than flit a glance over him and even with everything he knows now that's still true. The light cuts him out in a sharp outline and Felipe's hair slips into his eyes only to be brushed back. It's something Fernando has seen him do more times than he could count if he was inclined to try to and - the thought bubbles up unbidden - will see again and again whatever happens in this room. It's more relief than awkwardness that leaves the trace of a smile on his face. They're both securely contracted regardless, and what Ferrari has joined together is bound in harness for another two years at least.

"So," Fernando says, pulling himself out of his reverie. "You wanted to talk."

"Not wanted to exactly," Felipe says, as he makes a futile attempt to shove his hands in pockets that aren't there. He gives up trying, momentarily looking at his hands and arms as if he's never seen them before and certainly doesn't know what to do with them. Fernando knows that's not true.

"Tell me again," he says, looking at Fernando with dark eyes. "Why you touched my car."

Fernando folds his arms in front of him, unconsciously holding his chin higher, as he answers. "I wasn't expecting you to be there."

"I start well," Felipe retorts.

"I know," Fernando says. "It's unfortunate you seem to need to these last races. You need more cards in your hand than that to take victories." He knows as he says it that it's a little unfair. Felipe hasn't been that far off his pace - his mind eluding those occasions when the F10's performed better under his team-mate's touch - and he hasn't ridden his luck as well as Fernando.

"I don't need lessons in racecraft from you," Felipe says, stubbornly, diverted at least temporarily from his point.

"You mean don't want," Fernando corrects. He leans back against the glass pane, watching the crawl of shadows across the room. "Not don't need."

"I don't want to learn to drive my team-mate off," Felipe says.

"You had not enough of that with Michael?" Fernando asks with a raised eyebrow, before continuing, "And you don't think your defenestrating habits are offputting enough?" the sentence slipping out in English, rather than the Italian they've been arguing in so far.

Eyes banked with muted fire, look at him, and Fernando is sure he can move if he wants. Maybe. "I meant off the track." Felipe takes a deep breath. "And you just said nothing of that - nothing of us - matters on track." A pause opens up and before Fernando can fill it, Felipe adds, "Though after this weekend I'm not sure it matters off the track."

Fernando stares at the sentence a moment. "You don't think you can race with someone you're sleeping with? What about Valencia?"

"I don't know for sure if you call that racing," Felipe says, thoughts of the last race weekend clearly visible in his eyes and Fernando shares the mutual shrug at vagaries of safety cars and ineffective penalties about which he is not bitter. That's not even mostly untrue - though he can multitask with his still present grievances, they've taken a back seat to more recent and more pressing events, one of whom is standing in front of him, his tongue worry-bitten and his face set.

Taking a step forward, Fernando drops his arms. It's mostly just a gesture - he's seen Felipe move fast enough to know his arms - raised or not - would make no difference if his team-mate chose. All he has are words, and he reaches out to trace the fingers on the hand Felipe rests on the table. His flesh is still sun-warmed and if Fernando didn't know... But he does and he's not sure. Hell, he's not sure what he's doing this close and this alone with Felipe and the adrenaline coiling up his spine surely isn't helping with his thought processes.

Not looking at anything but the hand Felipe is holding carefully still, Fernando starts, "I can fuck you when we're not on track and race you when we are. Is not a problem for me. At least..." He tries to think of the next words. "Not in the same way it seems to be for you. I'm not going to be easier on you than the others; that wouldn't be the right thing to do."

"I don't like it," Felipe says, taking hold of Fernando's hand. "I don't like being nothing to you." Fernando makes an attempt to interrupt, to say that's not what he means, but Felipe shrugs and continues, "But that is not our only problem. If we are apart in the race - you're not careless," he says, the words slowly dragging out of him. "You touched me on purpose, and not for the race, but because of what happened before."

He looks up at Fernando, and asks, "Is that how I should expect my team-mate to drive against me now?"

Instinctively Fernando takes a step back, tugging his wrist free from Felipe's loose grip and not rubbing at where he can still feel the pressure of Felipe's fingers. "You can expect me to drive to win."

"With any advantage?" Felipe asks.

"It's not an advantage," Fernando argues. "I'm not the one who uses unnatural advantages in my race."

"I don't," Felipe starts to protest.

"So your lights-to-pedal time is the same now as it was before?" Fernando accuses. "How long have you been like - that - anyway?"

"Since Hungary," Felipe answers, his voice suddenly quiet. Oh, Fernando thinks, and doesn't say anything back. Sometimes he forgets - not Felipe's accident - but that it was any more serious than any other off. Motor racing is dangerous, but he - everyone - prefers to think it safer now, the last driver fatality sixteen years ago not potentially less than one.

He's still and listening when Felipe says, "It's not like I woke up one morning and thought to try some performance enhancing vampirism."

"No?" Fernando's lips give a tired quirk.

"No," Felipe agrees.

"But you wouldn't give it up," Fernando asks, eyes on his - he doesn't know. Doesn't know what he's asking, if it's even possible.

"I couldn't," Felipe says, "It is me now. I think, me for as long as I am."

"But not enough for you to tell me," Fernando says, leaning against the table.

Felipe comes round and sits next to him. His raceboots barely touch the carpeting, Fernando notices, as Felipe tells him, "When should I have said that? Hello, my name is Felipe Massa, your new team-mate, and I have a blood habit and some dental issues."

"I think before we had sex would've been good," Fernando says, "Or when I found you on your knees with bloody lips, maybe. Any way that wasn't how I found out would have been better." Because it was finding out not being told and how long would Felipe have gone on not telling him? How long risking something happening? Something when they were on the ground floor with no convenient windows, and Fernando leans away just a fraction as Felipe tilts toward him.

"But you know now," Felipe says. "I have no more secrets." He sighs, adding bitterly, "There is only this for you to exploit."

"It's not exploiting," Fernando says, half-heartedly. Mentioning he's worrying about Felipe to the medical director wasn't and neither was a move that was only sixty percent deliberate and that he was sure wouldn't take Felipe out of the race. He flinches at the cool prickle that's Felipe's breath on his neck and his team-mate leans back.

"It's not helping though," Felipe says, and Fernando hears fabric rustle against the smooth table as he shuffles back.

"No, it's not," Fernando says, because it's easier than picking apart the coiled tangle that's how he feels about Felipe now. He thought there was nothing his team-mate could do to surprise him when he heard Ferrari's confirmation of Felipe's contract in 2009, but the reality is much more complicated. More complicated but not something of which he wants to let go. Not completely.

"Then, what?" Felipe sounds as mixed up as Fernando feels.

"I think we should just drive for a while," Fernando says. "Just as team-mates and nothing else." He locks eyes with Felipe. "Maybe later..." he trails off. Maybe he'll get used to Felipe's new state or his knowledge of it, maybe Felipe will learn not to expect him to change his approach to driving and maybe the ball of lust and fear and fascination and distaste will subside enough for him to make a decision for good one way or the other.

Felipe answers, not with words, but with a kiss. The press of lips on lips, the clank of teeth. Fernando closes his eyes and pushes forwards, as competitive in this as in anything and though he's the only one involved in this kiss that needs to breathe doesn't stop him from trying his best to make Felipe breathless.

He's not sure how long it is before Felipe pulls away, rumpled and with a blood-smudged nip from Fernando on his lower lip. Fernando takes a deep breath as Felipe steps back. He's not going to pull the other man back to him, he's not. This is for the best for now.

Felipe interrupts his train of thought, saying, "I'm going to Brazil for a few days, so-" He pauses, and Fernando can see him searching for words, before Felipe gives up and simply says, "I'll see you when we head out to Germany."

"Okay," Fernando says to a retreating Felipe, giving his team-mate a few minutes headstart while he looks out at a darkening track. "Until Hockenheim."

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by _Massa/Alonso, Vampires, Alonso learns something new about his team mate._ at _[f1slash_kink](http://f1slash-kink.livejournal.com)_.


End file.
